Planning & Procurement Manager

Key Responsibilities:

Planning Responsibility:

• S&OP process owner: Build, own and drive a disciplined Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) process, ensuring alignment across demand, supply, inventory, and storage capacity planning. Review and update current process for Operations, Commercial and relevant functional teams to validate and execute the agreed supply plans.
• Supply Planning: Validate demand forecasts with sales trends and forecast accuracy performance to justify inventory investment. Lead exceptions management process to identify fulfilment risks, and constraints, and enable timely, fact-based trade-off decisions with key stakeholders to finalize sales plan. Review supply plans to optimize cost to serve, working capital (inventory and cash) and service level (OTIF).
• Inventory Optimization & Risk Management: Optimize inventory with agreed service levels. Improve working capital efficiency through mitigating aging inventory with sales clearance effort or disposal to maintain inventory health. Drive actions to identify, reduce, and eliminate excess and obsolete.
• Key performance indicators (KPIs): Lead S&OP governance and review meetings with strong process discipline, accountability, and compliance; Establish, monitor key operational performance indicators (KPIs), i.e., inventory health, service levels, forecast accuracy, and supply reliability. Accountable to achieve target inventory turn, inventory days, inventory coverage, ageing inventory, stock write-offs, forecast accuracy and bias, and other planning metrics as needed.
• Planning system management: Ensure regular updates to planning parameters in the Material master (MM) database; Oversee the MM process of respective planners to obtain all material data for timely and accurate material master data creation/update (lead-time, safety stock, material code, etc.); Coordinate with SAP ITBP team to resolve planning system issues.

Procurement Responsibility

• Supplier Management: Build and maintain strong relationships with suppliers, negotiate contracts, and ensure compliance with agreements and performance metrics.
• Cost Savings Initiatives: Identify opportunities for cost reduction, value creation, and process optimization within the procurement function.
• Risk Management: Assess and mitigate planning and procurement risks, including supply chain disruptions, price volatility, and regulatory compliance.

Key Competencies:

• Leadership: Lead and mentor a team of planning and procurement professionals, foster a culture of collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate with internal stakeholders, including commercial, finance, and operations for execution to business success.
• Performance Monitoring: Establishing KPIs and metrics for effective execution and performance management towards operational excellence, continuous improvement
• Compliance and Ethics: Ensure compliance with relevant laws, regulations, and company policies, promote ethical conduct and integrity in planning and procurement activities.
• Continuous Improvement: Drive continuous improvement initiatives. Identify, prioritize, and lead continuous improvement initiatives across forecasting accuracy, replenishment scheduling, inventory optimization, and supplier supply planning.

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in business, supply chain management, or a related field with a minimum of 7-10 years of progressive experience in operations, engineering, or supply chain leadership, including direct ownership of S&OP.
• Strong in planning processes and understands key Supply Chain elements including Planning, Logistics, Warehousing and drive process improvements.
• Proven work experience in planning and procurement leadership roles, preferably within a multinational corporation, ideally within chemicals/ingredients industry managing complex buying-and-selling business processes and models.
• Deep understanding of Procurement & Planning best practices, market dynamics, and supply chain management principles.
• Excellent leadership and team management abilities, with strategic mindset to translate business objectives into actions.
• Analytical mindset, with proficiency in data analysis, financial modeling, and performance metrics.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with ability to influence key stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
• Proven ability to influence, coach, and align stakeholders across multiple organizational levels, functions, and geographies.
• Results-oriented, with a track record of driving measurable business improvements and scalable process solutions.
• Demonstrated project and program management expertise, including cross-functional coordination, communication, execution, governance, and post-implementation review.
• Strong change leadership skills with the ability to drive adoption of new processes, systems, and behaviors.
• Strong negotiation skills, with a track record of achieving cost savings and value creation.

Brenntag provides equal employment opportunities to qualified applicants and employees of all backgrounds and identities to create a workplace where difference is valued because it forms a resilient and more innovative organization. We do not discriminate on the basis of age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, religion or belief, parental and family status, or any other protected characteristic. We welcome applications from women, men and non-binary candidates of all ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds.

Brenntag TA Team